CALL TO DUTY

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If I had to think of the most frequent question asked of me by my clients at the end of a session it would be, “How do you do this work everyday?”

I have been doing social work for over 25 years. First it was in hospital emergency rooms, then in acute care and most recently, at Hospice. It is an honour to listen to peoples’ stories, but listening to difficult stories has a cumulative affect whether we admit it or not. The older workers taught me to make jokes out of some pretty dark situations. What they didn’t teach me was how to manage a job that calls you to duty everyday. Social workers, nurses, first responders - we are the ones asked to handle the bad news or be the first ones to attend a situation.

Few organizations have set up the support that workers need to manage these situations in healthy ways, but some are making progress like the Waterloo Regional Police Service. (https://www.therecord.com/news-story/7418423-waterloo-region-police-wellness-unit-looks-at-officer-well-being-especially-after-tough-calls/)

Here’s what I learned over time:

  1. When we first encounter a situation that doesn’t sit right with us, we need to speak to a professional colleague about it: nurse-to-nurse, police officer-to-police officer, social worker-to-social worker. This person has to acknowledge the impact of the experience.
  2. We need this “supervisor” to check in with us the next day to help us realize that we did the best we could at the time, and to help us deal with the questions we have about our choice of action or inaction.
  3. We need to learn how to go back or if we need to go back to be with the ones that are left hurting and to accept that we cannot take away someone’s pain, but we can support them through it.
  4. We need continuing education in our fields and the opportunity to work closely with mentors who can guide and teach us healthy ways to cope with changing expectations and work environments.

When we work for an organization that recognizes the impact of our work and gives us time to meet informally and in teams we have scored big time. When we don’t have that built in support at work we need to find our own professional supervision or therapist that can help us manage the demands of our respective calls to duty.